AUSSIES SPEAK OUT

Tens of thousands of Australians took to the streets yesterday to press the government to free boatpeople being held in outback prison camps and to stop diverting asylum seekers to nearby South Pacific nations. Leading labor, religious, political and academic figures joined the protests in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, slamming the Government as heartless and inhumane.

More than 15,000 people rallied in Melbourne, lining the streets around the Town Hall before marching to the Treasury gardens. Co-organizer and Trades Hall Council secretary Leigh Hubbard said the groups sponsoring the rally wanted to abolish mandatory detention, temporary as opposed to permanent protection visas and the Pacific solution. "The message of today is refugees are welcome here," Hubbard said to loud applause. The crowd in Melbourne cheered most loudly for Fahim Fayyazi, who was held for nine months at the controversial Woomera detention center in the barren desert of South Australia after arriving on a boat in December 1999. Fayyazi told the rally his health suffered and he became suicidal at the camp, recently plagued by riots and hunger strikes, and said Australians had been intimidated into believing refugees posed a threat. "As soon as Australian people begin to understand refugees, definitely they will change their mind," he said.

In Sydney about 15,000 people marched in complete silence, many bearing masks depicting Prime Minister John Howard with his lips sewn together. Former Australian of the Year and one-time refugee John Yu and former government minister Tom Uren were among the throng. Both described the Government's refugee policy as abhorrent and called for an end to mandatory detention. Dr Yu, Vice-Chancellor of the University of NSW and a renowned pediatrician, was himself smuggled out of China as a three-year-old shortly before it fell to Japanese forces in World War II. "I cannot condone the systematic destruction of the hope and spirit of people who have suffered hardship and pain to reach our shores," he said. "They are people who believe that they have been or are at risk of being persecuted in their own country."

In Adelaide, Woomera Lawyers Group spokeswoman Tirana Hassan told a crowd of around 500 that Australians had been subjected to a well-orchestrated campaign that has created a climate of fear and xenophobia. "[The Government] has actively demonized the men, women and children that seek asylum on our shores, a campaign of misinformation that has turned asylum-seekers and refugees men, women, children, mothers, fathers, families, newly married couples, people into queue-jumpers, illegals and terrorists," she said. Posters and leaflets picturing hearts wrapped in razor wire were handed out, and banners calling for an end to mandatory detention, freedom for children, and better treatment for refugees, were scattered throughout the crowd. Ms Hassan said the razor wire that surrounded South Australia's Woomera detention center symbolized the way the government was trying to create a divide between asylum seekers and the Australian public. "It is the razor wire that is keeping refugees and asylum seekers locked away from the Australian people," she said. "It is the razor wire that keeps Australian people from knowing the truth about the appalling conditions in which the Australian government keeps men, women and children who come to this country seeking asylum. "It is time for the razor wire to come down, it is time for the truth to come out."
Sources: The Age (Australia), Canberra Times, Reuters

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